Saturday, July 28, 2012

Chancing Faith, a contemporary romance by Empi Baryeh, is set in a Ghanaian advertising milieu (Black Opal Books paperback, 2012). The last time I enjoyed reading an office romance was in 2005: Jane Porter’s The Secretary’s Seduction, a light-hearted and winsome, old-fashioned Cinderella fairytale (easily the least moody Harlequin Presents I have ever read). Ghanaian author Empi Baryeh’s romance is rooted in a more recognisable world1. including a realistically depicted corporate environment and a hero and heroine with concrete career abilities and visions, but it possesses that same, unexpected quality of tenderness that arises from caring and good-natured protagonists who sincerely like each other.

In order to complete the requirements of her Chartered Marketing Certification course Naaki Faith Tabika applies for an internship at MIA, a leading but corruption-tarnished Accra advertising agency. Unknown to the employees, MIA is facing a disadvantageous merger with an international marketing company in which Thane Aleksander, an account executive flown in from the USA to audit the agency and oversee the restructuring, is hoping to make partner.

Career-driven Naaki worries that a relationship would trap her into the traditional female role of home-making, and Thane realises the limited duration of his stay in Ghana would make a committed relationship unfeasible even if his heart was not smarting from a previous breakup. How much distance can an office romance bridge?

The author takes the reader behind the scenes of the operations of an advertising agency, the principal setting of Chancing Faith, about which she seems knowledgeable. Both Naaki and Thane are serious about their work and ably demonstrate their competence. So far so good. My problem was that their interactions quickly cross into what would be considered inappropriate boss/subordinate behaviour in the workplaces I have known, murky even when they take it outside the office. In the back of my mind a lingering sense of unease flashed “HR violation” more than once. This is something of which the hero and heroine, too, seem aware but irrationally permit themselves to indulge in at every turn anyway. In a romance, unlike in the real world, I can, on one level, accept this very sweet couple’s head-over-heels infatuation as cute, partly due to their non-exploitative personalities, partly because (end spoiler) they end up as equal business partners. Nevertheless, it is an ethically troublesome scenario that strengthens my reluctance to try more office romances. Having said this, it is only fair to point out that in spite of the sensual type of romance implied by the cover the physical relationship is actually kept within bounds that permit only one love scene, close to the end. Instead the couple’s developing attraction is explored through companionship and emotional and physical yearning.

I found both Naaki and Thane very likeable. Both are warmhearted and unjudgmental individuals, yet firm and capable in their professional roles. A beta hero in an alpha suit, Thane came more convincingly alive for me due to his better articulated and animated point of view, which includes a slight but amusing touch of self-deprecating humour. At first he seems the stereotypical hero left scarred by a toxic relationship and vowing to avoid serious involvement with another woman, but this trust issue is quickly ditched in a pattern that becomes familiar throughout a story that seems lost about what to do with points of conflict. If a holiday from angst-ridden heroes sounds good, though, Thane fits the bill. As a bonus, he is a sweetheart.

My reaction to any given romance is more strongly bound to the portrayal of the heroine, however, and I came away a bit dissatisfied by what was left out here. Naaki is a lovely character with some truly positive, proactive attributes but her voice and arc are conveyed with a limpness that prevents the story from maximising on her potential as a heroine. This may be due to the book’s main flaw, one of technique: low tension.

The writing of Chancing Faith is clean, unfussy, and unforced, and the simple, linear storyline unfolds smoothly if slightly repetitively with lots of minutiae filling in the space left by the absence of a strong, central conflict. Consequently, the (minimal) plot sags and the pacing plods; emotional highs and lows become muted. Ironically, plenty of story is compressed into the final twenty pages. That is where the plot lies that could have injected the missing zing and snap into the anaemic main body of the narrative. As written, neither cultural divergence nor the conflict inherent in both the allegedly controversial terms of the merger and in the touted corruption are mined for their potential to deepen character complexity or generate friction.

Another missed opportunity: the former love interests, cardboards who are, furthermore, used stereotypically. In the case of Naaki’s ex-boyfriend the gravity of the path the author chooses to take is underplayed, doing both the characters involved as well as the narrative a disfavour not least by, for example, “resolving” extreme chauvinism with alpha machismo; the subtext in this climaxing scene contradicts the book’s message of female empowerment by rendering the heroine impotent to influence the situation as her welfare is placed entirely at the mercy of the physical acts of men. Unfortunately, too, when the actual moment of deepest despair arrives, the trial is not only one-sided and extremely shortlived but also so artificial as to be meaningless. It is symptomatic of the author’s struggling grasp of conflict that she is forced to lobotomise two previously intelligent characters to manufacture a dramatic culmination.

Romance readers who feel a small dose of setting description goes a long way should be pleased to note that location details are applied with a light touch. With one or two exceptions Ghana and Accra are a barely-there presence, a subtle but natural fragrance that refreshes like the lemongrass from Naaki’s vegetable garden. Thane’s preoccupation with work means that he barely notices his foreign surroundings but he pays attention and adapts when differing business customs are pointed out to him by Naaki, a local. ‘Home’ to Thane seems to equal whatever office to which he happens to be attached, whereas Naaki’s quiet pride in her country turns out to be one of the driving forces behind her career goals. This leads to an outcome that is as nice as it is unusual in a romance, a genre which thrives on fantasy yet usually adheres with depressing stepfordism to Ruth’s “Whither thou goest”.

In the final analysis the warmth and sincerity of Empi Baryeh’s voice clicked so pleasantly with me that the sweetness of her couple and her effortless prose managed to soothe most of my criticisms and quibbles (for example, Thane is a seasoned international traveller but is taken aback by perfectly ordinary customs processing). I hope Baryeh's future work will capitalise on the slightly quirky humour that occasionally flickered endearingly through Thane's viewpoint. Because, though sapped of vigour by severe structural weaknesses, Chancing Faith still exudes a smile-inducing charm that persuades me to keep an eye out for other international romances this author may produce once her technique has matured a bit more.

(A lengthy excerpt from Chancing Faith can be read eat the paperback publisher site and at Smashwords.)

1. Some references seemed a bit off timewise until I drew the conclusion that the story takes place circa 2007. Naaki is said to have been 17 at the time of Y2K – a banner year for a very different reason in Ghana, as Naaki points out – and twenty-four when the story takes place (Thane is thirty-two).

Romances of related interest: What I enjoy most about and tend to look for in international or multicultural romances is a sense of caring and determination to navigate the maze of cross-cultural dialogue. Love is one of the most effective ways of ensuring willingness to listen and understand, to gain the courage or craziness required to plunge into that which is unfamiliar, strange, or different, to place oneself in awkward situations, and to risk - even embrace - heartache in order to bridge known and unknown divides inside oneself, in cultures, in families and circles of friends, in the world at large. Building and maintaining relationships that last is always work, but when love brings two (or more) countries and cultures together the hard work can grow exponentially. Whether one goes about such a relationship carefully or impulsively, analytically or intuitively, it is a fascinating labour of love. Their optimistic and affirmative approach to such relationships give romances a very heartening edge over most other forms of literature. With that in mind, here are three more contemporary romances that bring together Africa and the United States (and in the last case, Canada, too) through various combinations of nationality and ethnicity. In The Light Of Love can look like a cheat in this company since the hero and heroine both hail from the United States, but there is another tie. A fourth contemporary romance, Midnight Skies, set in Zimbabwe, can be found in today's companion post. Previously I have also blogged about Blue Fire by Phyllis A. Whitney, which pairs a woman from the USA with a (white) South African man in a 1960s South African setting (it is a romantic suspense).

Uganda: In The Light Of Love by Deborah Fletcher Mello

Deborah Fletcher Mello’s In The Light Of Love (Kimani mass market paperback, 2007) sends a surgeon, Dr Jericho Becton, and a Wesleyan camp leader for medical student volunteers, Talisa London, both from the USA, as relief workers to Uganda. (While In The Light Of Love contains some religious references it is not an Inspirational romance.) The plight of a country trying to stabilize while battling the social and economic devastations of past and localised current armed conflict is a remote backdrop and local characters remain distant others in this oddly conflictless novel, despite an external plot that culminates in dangerous encounters with rebel forces. Paradoxically, more genuine anxiety and tension comes through in the secondary storyline dealing with family troubles in the United States than in either the romance, hospitals, or conflict zones of Uganda, where the reader is reminded of the reason for this setting by random glimpses of the teary-eyed compassion of the hero and heroine. But the storytelling is warm and the writing expertly smooth, the couple is harmoniously matched, and the ensemble cast varied and sympathetic.

USA/Nigeria: Dark Storm Rising by Chinelu Moore

The spicy, category-length romance Dark Storm Rising by Chinelu Moore (Genesis Press/Indigo large print paperback, 1996) pairs independent US aerobics teacher/aspiring holistic health consultant Starmaine Lassiter with persistent Nigerian businessman/investor Daran Ajero in a US East Coast region; the epilogue is set in Nigeria. Romance plots built on misunderstandings are tricky to carry off and it does not help that the writing in Dark Storm Rising is amateurishly stilted, rushed, and unpolished. In spite of the dramatic title, don't expect suspense: this is a straight contemporary romance. Readers able to connect with the characters, who can see humour in their mistrust and snideness, and who don’t mind that culture divides are used as gloss rather than for substance may find it a breezy romp. I reached the end only by skimming.

Senegal: Whispers In The Sand by LaFlorya Gauthier

Of all the romances detailed in this post Whispers in the Sand by LaFlorya Gauthier takes its setting most seriously (One World/Ballantine Books/Indigo paperback, 1996). Momar Diallo, a Senegalese diplomat hoping for a career-advancing foreign posting is instead assigned to escort a documentary film crew from the United States. Sparks of attraction immediately ignite between him and Lorraine Barbette, whom he mistakes for a Canadian embassy employee but in fact is the US-born producer-director (they are kissing by page 31). Everything goes swimmingly until – late in the book – someone in the film crew violates strict cultural protocol. It has been too long since I read Whispers In The Sand to recall specifics beyond that I liked it, but leafing through the pages in default of any notes immediately brought back how assiduously the author has applied herself to creating an immersive cultural experience for the reader. It also reinforced my impression that the relationship takes a definite backseat to the cross-country travelogue, with the couple’s duties keeping them apart half the time. An appendix consisting of a two-page glossary and three recipes (Akara, Bassi Saleté, Yassa With Chicken) plus a couple of small food notes is a nice bonus.

Only in a romance, I suspect, does long distance pose no particular hurdle in a bi-continental relationship. Fortunately for the hero and heroine of Midnight Skies, a contemporary romance by Crystal Barouche, the logistical challenges of their incipient romance are neutralised by opportunities and coincidences created by work, fame, and wealth. The ease with which they are thrown into contact resembles that of people who live in the same town and share acquaintances. Luckily for my ability to suspend disbelief, that is where the fantasy ended and the reality of international couplehood took over.

Risen from the ashes of civil war, Zimbabwean Jonathan Mokane operates an internationally recognised safari business. An engagement with the Smithsonian Institute in the USA lands him as a stand-in guest on The Natural World, a television programme hosted by Sela Clay. Their on-screen sparring raises the interest of Sela’s family, whose ancestors hailed from the area of Victoria Falls, and of her bosses, impressed by the sudden upsurge in viewer ratings. Soon Sela is on her way to Zimbabwe with a television crew to film a segment about Jonathan’s wildlife safari.

Sela considers Jonathan arrogant and he believes her to be spoilt, yet as they are forced to work together they develop an appreciation for each other’s deeper qualities, which gradually fuels attraction. But Sela has fought too hard for her career to give everything up for an uncertain romance with a man who doesn’t understand her background any more than she can share his views, shaped by traditions and challenges she, in turn, knows nothing about. Leaving Zimbabwe and Jonathan behind, she thinks both are a closed chapter.

Life has taught Jonathan to believe in second chances, perhaps even in third chances. He realises it will take more than attraction to make a relationship with an independent career woman like Sela work. But when she suffers a professional setback, which tears them further apart than ever before, even Jonathan runs out of answers. Only their shared love of the wild remains – but is it enough to salvage a common future?

Last February I put Midnight Skies on hold after bland writing and a self-righteous heroine eroded my initial curiosity about the handling of cultural conflict and the Zimbabwean landscape on the eve of the country’s headline-making land reforms (Barouche’s novel was published by Kensington Arabesque in 1997). In June I was on a rare contemporary romance glom and gave Midnight Skies a second chance. I now discovered that I had abandoned the book just as the storytelling was about to switch gears. Although I never overcame my irritation with the behaviour of the singularly inept heroine and the story gives no indication of the social changes around the corner, I did derive occasional enjoyment from the awareness of relationship challenges presented by divergent cultural perspectives, settings that include a luxurious wildlife safari (caviar, brandy in crystal glasses, foods reflecting Zimbabwe’s British colonial past as Rhodesia) and trips to landmark localities, and a forthright, principled hero. As regards the prose, often trite, at other times exhibiting random flashes of evocative imagery, its unevenness goes hand in hand with writing style that seemed a cobbled-together patchwork of originally disparate story segments.

After an abrasive introduction due to scenes pitting the hero and heroine competitively against each other, Jonathan Mokane turned out to be really nice hero material, coming into his own once the story shows him in his home environment. Unlike Sela he has his wits about him and knows what he is talking about. Competent, sharp-witted, thoughtful, and affectionate, he is interestingly rounded and grew more appealing the more I learnt about him.

The opposite was true of the heroine. Despite efforts by the author to elicit sympathy for Sela by showing the odds she has had to battle as a woman and an African American, her personality rubbed me the wrong way, making it a struggle for me to empathise with her disorientation in the, to her, alien environment of Zimbabwe. This is a character who hosts a nature programme and is even sent on assignment to Africa - where she thinks she’ll find coyotes and tigers, and goes jogging, alone and unarmed, through the bush even after seeing a local pick up his rifle as a precaution when simply stepping out of a car for a few seconds - but who proceeds to take up public, international championship of a cause she has failed to put the most basic research into. When this astounding lack of professional standards backfires, she refuses to acknowledge her own culpability. A passive-aggressive type, she continuously drifts into problematic situations then self-righteously blames others for messes caused by her own unpreparedness or incompetence, not to say stupidity. This, too, is a heroine to whom it would never occur to pick up the phone and dial the hero or say what is in her heart unless he did it first, all the while fretting that he is not making his feelings clear when in fact she is the one equivocating every time he tries or actually does. Oh, the job troubles? Spoiler: Not to worry, a famous motion picture director is already knocking on her door, keen to sign her on as his wildlife expert on an epic set in Zimbabwe. End of spoiler.

Perhaps the most basic reason Sela failed for me is that she seems thinly conceived as a character. Yes, she is given thematic issues but somehow these don’t seem to integrate with her personality into a fully fledged character. She comes across as a type. It can be observed, for example, in the author’s insistence on showing how much rich and famous African Americans admire Sela. In fact, this emphasis on recognition and being desired grew to almost disturbing proportions. There is relentless namedropping to establish her (self-)importance. Oprah Winfrey personally calls Sela to secure an interview after Sela informs Oprah’s assistant she will have to check her schedule first (Oprah: “Miss Sela, you know you got us all envious”, p.107). Music legends and political influencers are equally dazzled: “Jesse Jackson was smiling at her; Quincy Jones called, ‘Talk to you later’ (p.142). Carol Moseley Brown tells Sela “You’re doing a great job”, p.106. Sela even gives a sold-out lecture at the “University in Harare” (the University of Zimbabwe?), although (then) Prime Minister Mugabe’s assistants, who fail to give her access to Mugabe, “did nothing except ask for her autograph, sniffing around her worse than American groupies” (p.123). A clear clue to the author's intentions is given during said lecture, at which members of the audience ask Sela about being black in a society in which blacks are a discriminated-against minority. I wish the author had chosen to drive the point home by less clumsy means.

The male cover model does not match the description of Jonathan Mokane as “plum-black” or, for that matter, “a head taller than anyone else (pp. 7, 43). While this is a common enough occurrence in romance publishing the discrepancy is noteworthy on the cover of a romance in which cultural conflicts are thoughtfully given central importance and the matter of skin colour is introduced as one of the sources of disharmony in the inter-family relations. Whatever frictions and obstacles their differing cultural perspectives and expectations cause, Sela and Jonathan derive only pleasure from each others looks and bodies. Yet when Sela confidently comments to Jonathan’s mother that, “No one can really understand everything about the other person. Especially from one country to another. But we are all blacks. In that we are equal”, Mrs Mokane disagrees. “‘Americans are not black. They are light as the sands of Kalahari. [Zimbabweans] are black.’” Sela is shocked. “It was the first time she’d ever been held accountable for her color. At home whites had excluded her, not blacks” (p. 200). (While degrees of inclusiveness among African Americans is not considered in the book, the members of Sela’s rather Cosbyesque family do respond in a variety of ways to Jonathan’s nationality and his relationship with Sela.)

The dissonances and hurt feelings arising out of cultural divergence generally ring true. The different expectations their backgrounds cause Sela and Jonathan to bring to the relationship is probably most prominently illustrated in the conflict centring on the Zimbabwean tradition of lobola or a bride price. Its offensiveness to Sela and her family seems related to the idea of buying and selling humans as slaves, but since the Clays refuse to engage with Jonathan in a dialogue about the custom, this interesting, concrete example of a cultural tradition becoming a relationship issue is unfortunately squandered on huffing instead of examined for its significance in Zimbabwean society.

The Zimbabwe of Midnight Skies is a de-politicised setting, so if the idea of (non-shooting) safaris and a bit of cultural travel intrigues then here is a safely romantic opportunity for scenic armchair travel. As I read I gained the impression that the author must have visited the country in person or read multiple memoirs because the details about safari camp life are abundant and specific, including names of flora and fauna. (It turns out the author had indeed experienced a Zimbabwean safari a few years prior to the book’s release; see the link about the author below, in the additional note). Although the Zimbabwean landscape shown is a very touristy idea of an African idyll, enhanced with the obligatory dash of adventure from the behaviour of predatory wildlife, it is employed for another purpose than simply as an exotic foil for the romance. Elephants play a role in highlighting the divide between Sela and Jonathan's cultures, being animals that are viewed differently by locals than they are by tourists - a bit like the kangaroos of Australia - and thus setting Jonathan and Sela on a collision course (link is a spoiler).

The amount of pleasure I derived from Midnight Skies did not necessarily compensate for the work, including overcoming bouts of tedium, I had to put into my reading in trying to finish the book. Nevertheless, Midnight Skies is an ambitious multi-cultural romance, and for that I must commend the author. It is a romance that tries hard to say something meaningful even as it entertains. Not every book I read can claim as much.

Additional note: considering some of the concerns voiced in a Dear Author comment thread about ethnic diversity in romance this past June, it did feel like an ironic twist when I discovered, once I began collecting links for this post, that the author of Midnight Skies, having successfully submitted her story to Kensington’s African-American romance imprint, Arabesque, is in fact Caucasian, albeit one apparently socially engaged in issues of equal rights, including race.

Excerpt

(Kensington/Pinnacle Books/Arabesque paperback, 1997, p. 73):

“She was shaking with emotion and grateful when the segment ended.

Putting his hand briefly over hers, Jonathan asked, ‘You okay?’

‘Fine,’ she said. She wasn’t sure. An elemental something had happened. She had seen life and then death, and she had felt a basic elemental attraction for a man with whom she had little in common. What did he know of mailmen and Pullman porters and women who worked two jobs in upwardly mobile America? And yet she felt elated, high.

When they were back at the camp again, Jonathan stirred the fire until the ghosts of the logs glowed, silvery-red. Sparks floated up into the suddenly dark sky, the moon hidden behind a bank of clouds.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Sela murmured, sipping the brandy Matui passed on a teakwood tray, crystal snifters in the wilderness. Jonathan’s shoulder touched hers as he pointed out a shooting star. She felt the heat of him, his breath like warm licorice tinged with mint.

‘I’m glad you like it.’

Such simple words, but it felt as if they had exchanged monumental disclosures. Was it because her heart was doing strange things whenever he was near? Or was it this wild primitive feeling that the world had stopped, returned to a more peaceful, if elemental, time? As the glowing logs slowly died, the smell of dead ash rose, and she reluctantly said good night to the others.

Jonathan walked with her to her chalet, the rifle cradled in his arm.

‘Aside from the lion getting familiar with me, it was a great first day,’ she said when they stood at the entrance to her room.”

Romances of related interest: Today's companion post about Chancing Faith by Empi Baryeh, set in Ghana, also contains notes about a few other contemporary romances that bridge Africa and North America.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Samuel Shellabarger’s 1947 bestseller, Prince of Foxes, is a swashbuckling adventure novel in the tradition of Alexandre Dumas (père). Set against the vibrant panorama of the Italian Renaissance it chronicles the fortunes of a young and ambitious artist-soldier in the midst of conquest and resistance as the Borgias are plotting to subject central Italy to their rule. Like Shellabarger’s previous historical novel, The Captain Of Castile, Prince of Foxes, too, was swiftly adapted for the silver screen, once again with Tyrone Power1 in the lead role, and with Cesare Borgia portrayed by Orson Welles. Sumptuous though the cinematography looks, the production having been shot on location in Italy (though regrettably not in colour), the film does not rival the verve of Samuel Shellabarger’s novel. Sixty-five years after its original publication Prince Of Foxes remains top-notch historical escapism, bursting with romance, adventure, wit, and one brilliantly entertaining twist after another.

1500. Italy is in turbulence, torn apart by strife between independent city-states and overrun by mercenaries in the pay of invading foreign powers. Convinced that Italy’s only hope of survival lies in unification, military captain Andrea Orsini serves as political agent for the increasingly powerful Borgias. Armed with cunning, charm, and a flexible conscience, Andrea faces his most dangerous assignment yet as he heads to Ferrara to persuade the hostile House of Este to concede to an alliance by marriage with the notorious Lucrezia Borgia. If successful, Andrea is to be rewarded with the city-state of Città del Monte and his choice between two high-ranking noblewomen for a bride. There is just the minor matter of ridding Città del Monte of its current ruler first.

That is, provided Andrea manages to stay alive that long in a political climate rife with assassinations. And provided the secret of his past does not leak out – a secret guaranteed to consign him to ignominy and strip him of everything he has worked for. For loyalty is a commodity, and secrets the coin in which everyone trades.

Even the wiliest fox cannot fool fate forever … or can he?

A few months before Prince Of Foxes began climbing the bestseller lists a historical novel titled Web Of Lucifer was released to smaller fanfare. A now largely forgotten work by Maurice Samuel, it provides unusually pertinent comparison reading.

Web Of Lucifer

Both Web Of Lucifer and Prince Of Foxes chart the career of a gifted young man in the service of Cesare Borgia and the moral dilemmas this employment eventually corners them into confronting. The two heroes come from the same region, Romagna (Mussolini’s birth region, as pointed out by Maurice Samuel in his account of writing the book), and from a similar family background. Both have lost their fathers. Samuel’s hero is named Orso, Shellabarger’s, Orsini. In both cases, love becomes an education in honour and decency. Several of the same historical figures appear in the books, including Lucia of Narni. Both authors dedicated considerable effort to grounding their plots in significant historical events and used a timeline spanning several years. Yet for all these similarities even a cursory glance presents no difficulty in ascertaining why one novel has remained a perennial favourite and the other sunk into oblivion. It boils down to a single issue: readability.

Consider the following paragraph, the opening of the first chapter of Web Of Lucifer: “Giacomo Orso of Picina, with whose adventures this book is chiefly concerned, was a lad when the story opens and not much more than a lad when it closes. He was seventeen years old at the time of his father’s death, he was twenty-three when he returned to his native Romagna from his service with Cesare Borgia; and he is introduced in this fashion precisely because in the Italy of those days – four and a half centuries ago – one was no longer “a lad” in the late teens, let alone the early twenties, if one had, like Giacomo, received an education. Cesare Borgia, for instance, was Governor of Orvieto at twenty. Cesare’s friend, Ippolito d’Este, was a cardinal at fifteen*. Lorenzo the Magnificent, who died at forty-two (when Giacomo was a boy of twelve), succeeded his father in the rulership of Florence when he was twenty-one – and at twenty-one he was already a master in the subtle manipulation of power which made him for two decades the key-stone of Italian politics. But Giacomo was still a lad when, at the age of twenty, he swore eternal fealty to Cesare Borgia, and only beginning to be a man when he retracted his oath three years later.” (Alfred A Knopf hardcover, 1947, p. 3)

In his foreword Romanian-born Maurice Samuel acknowledges his admiration for his former compatriot, Ferdinand Gregorovius, a historian of the Renaissance. Having made a decade-long study of the Renaissance for the purpose of writing Web Of Lucifer the author carries over his conscientiousness about historical substance into his stylistic choices, which amalgamate moralising nineteenth-century textbooks and the Victorian Gothic of Sir Walter Scott. As indicated by the above quote, the result is dense exposition, author intrusion, and foreshadowing, but also deliberately archaic dialogue: “’Why playest thou the saint with me? Knowest thou not well that I am as heartsick as thou? But what wouldst thou do with the Gianbattista? Didst thou not hear that they are worse than traitors?’” (p. 252).

As their titles suggest, where Web Of Lucifer and Prince Of Foxes diverge most significantly is tone and intent. The reader who is able to look past prose that by today’s standards is excruciatingly ponderous or who accepts the stylised dialogue as a nod to the period it attempts to recreate will find in Web Of Lucifer a solemn take on the uses of history in fiction. In Samuel’s novel the Italian Renaissance becomes a parable for the atrocities of World War II. Discursive and digressive, it invites sober reflection on grim, harrowing concerns, not least the corrupting effect of power and personal responsibility when faced with evil. An atmosphere of existential despair haunts the narrative, a despair held at bay only by hope in the few who fight to keep the candles of reason and justice burning in a world darkened by indifference, denial, and selfishness. Patient reading ultimately rewards one with an earnest character study in Giacomo Orso, out to avenge the murder of his father, and a minutely detailed, critical portrait of an era.

By contrast, Prince of Foxes is the amusement park version of the Renaissance, where you strap yourself into a seat in expectation of a fun diversion and are flung, gasping, into a break-neck thrill-ride. It is no struggle to appreciate the aims of Web Of Lucifer and the personal dimension these particular themes at that particular time may have held for the author (much of Maurice Samuel’s oeuvre, including translations and lectures, centred on Jewish cultural themes and Jewish-Christian relations), but I must admit to skimming heavy-handed passages on more than one occasion. While accessibility of style and charm of content are debatable measures of literary quality they undoubtedly make Prince Of Foxes a smoother read. However, more than a (biassed) case of popular fiction providing amusements literary fiction does not, this novel’s enduring popularity testifies to solid merits of it own.

On rereading

When I reread Prince Of Foxes some months ago it was the first time in two decades. Most readers, I expect, dust off a long unvisited favourite with some trepidation, hoping the magic its pages once contained will flare back to life as brightly, as warmly as it did all those years ago. A short while earlier I had gone back to a classic that, like Prince Of Foxes, had amazed me in my teens. My admiration for the author’s achievement certainly grew during that reread and cemented my love of the book. At the same time, the emotional disparity caused by intellectual maturation and memories of my excitement at the mind-expanding discoveries back in my teens continually interfered between me and the text, keeping me at an intangible, unbridgeable remove from the story – too much an observer instead of a participant. So I was wary about reacquainting myself with Prince Of Foxes. This time, I chose to try to trick memory by reading the book in another language (the original English).

The shake-awake freshness I had been unable to recapture with the other book – The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson – was there in full force with Prince Of Foxes. Perhaps my experiment helped a little. Perhaps a visit in the intervening years to Italy, including Venice and Rome, proved a stimulating support for imagination. But after puzzling about it I believe the determining factor lay in the different expectations I brought with me to the rereadings, expectations based on my original responses to the books.

In my teenage years it was the provocational capacity of The Long Ships that impressed me the deepest: the story affected my outlook on the world by challenging me to rethink notions of what is absurd. Since then I have come full circle: I consider many of my youthful beliefs folly and concepts which then seemed outrageous, if intriguing, self-evident. The most memorable element for my younger self had, through the years, lost that edge of the deliciously radical. In contrast, the appeal of Prince Of Foxes never rested on its ability to stretch the limits of my mind. It was always the characters that beguiled me with their spiciness and their cat-and-mouse games that make a point of confusing just who is holding the upper hand. The only surprise now was rediscovering how sharp and smart this incredibly enjoyable swashbuckler continues to remain.

Prince Of Foxes

Prince Of Foxes is historical fiction with flair. The storytelling crackles with vitality as arts, politics, religion, and warfare mingle in a twisting plot, sly verbal sparring, daredevil action, nefarious skulduggery, and plenty of picturesque pageantry. Fascinating characters make it all come together in a lively, brilliantly choreographed whole. (The people of Shellabarger’s Renaissance are like mosaics in a dazzling kaleidoscope, re-arranging themselves in ever-shifting configurations.) This book features not only one of my favourite fictional couples in the hero and his lady love but one of my all-time favourite characters in literature, the assassin Mario Belli.

In common with Alexandre Dumas’s swashbucklers the humour and adventure in Prince Of Foxes is not empty buffoonery. The at times ironic, even sarcastic, attitude to honour and devotion masks a search for ideals worth defending and thus an unmistakeable moral core informs the plot. Like Maurice Samuel, Shellabarger, too, found in the shadowy aspects of the Renaissance a mirror for the events that had recently ravaged Europe. (One of Shellabarger’s sons was killed in WWII). The historical framework of the novel consists of the move toward unification under an able and charismatic leader, a man who exploits popular hatred of the nation’s designated enemies as a rallying point for people to unite under a single banner.

Andrea Orsini admires Cesare Borgia as a genius, a political realist with the power and foresight to bring progress and prosperity by strong-arming Italy into unification. While violence and conspiracy are regrettable they must, Andrea reasons, be accepted as natural parts of revolution. And if the goal of unification at the same time profits the private interests of the House of Borgia – including Pope Alexander VI, Cesare and Lucrezia’s father – then that is the privilege of princes. Yet as in Italy from the 1920s onward and Germany from the 1930s onward, so in Borgia Italy: once the worthiness of a common goal is determined to make ruthless means acceptable allegiance enables not the sought-for liberty but tyranny.

If Shellabarger’s Cesare Borgia brings to mind the tyrant associated with Machiavelli’s The Prince, his portrait of the virtuous Marc’ Antonio Varano is surely influenced by Castiglione’s The Courtier. A counterpoint to the arbitrary exercise of power by the Borgias, Varano is an aging statesman whose guiding principle is to consider the common good, not private gain, and whose peaceable city state, Città del Monte, exemplifies government based on the rule of law. Judging Varano deluded as well as decrepit, the ambitious Andrea is predisposed to holding him in contempt as an inept prince and impotent ruler. Expecting Città del Monte to yield to the Borgias like wheat before the scythe, Andrea is perturbed when an obstacle he never saw coming suddenly endangers his own future: a battle with his conscience.

The narrative is unambiguous about the decision the righteous person must make when the time comes to choose between submission to injustice and rebellion against it. A major character who endorses the idea of Italian unification but opposes Cesare Borgia’s oppressive methods explains: “’It may be urged that if I favour the end he seeks, I should support him; that treachery and craft in a good cause are justified. Not so. If good at times springs out of evil, to God’s almighty dispensation, not to evil, be the praise. He makes man’s villainy to serve Him: that is His perquisite. But let no man believe that he serves God by villainy. The kiss of Judas brought Our Blessed Lord to the Cross and, thus, salvation to mankind, yet Judas hanged himself’” (p. 306).

Prince Of Foxes depicts a society in which religion is closely allied with politics, exemplified by the unscrupulous tug-of-war over Lucia of Narni2. A historical figure, the Blessed Lucia Brocadelli was a nun and holy woman who at the time the novel covers was greedily fought over by cities and princes eager to enhance their fame and reputation by securing her permanent presence as a spiritual guide. The Savonarolan background of the historical Lucia is not directly referenced in the novel (if I recall correctly), nor is the persecution his followers eventually suffered. Instead her fortitude and piety are made to serve as reminders of truths no conscience can escape. Girolamo Savonarola was a Florentine preacher who is now principally remembered for organising a bonfire at which books and artworks judged immoral were burned. But his vocal condemnation of Church corruption and belief in the superior authority of the Bible over ecclesiastical bodies also made him one of the cogs that eventually produced the Protestant Reformation. He was executed in 1498; ironically, through burning at the stake. Unlike the controversial zealotry of her teacher, Shellabarger’s Lucia of Narni is the gentlest of visionaries, a sufferer whose understanding of the human psyche nurtures her empathy even as she encourages reform. In Prince Of Foxes religious faith is a tempering, humane influence, not the darkly fanatical and destructive force so common in historical fiction set during the Renaissance or the Middle Ages. It would be going too far to say that this is a spiritual novel, but the inspiration the novel’s philosophy draws from faith and agape is, I think, a fundamental part of the story’s power to uplift.

This was also a time when everyone and everything were thought to have their own, proper place in a grand, divinely ordained structure. Conforming to that place was essential for the maintenance of harmony. To upset the proper order of things was therefore more than a simple personal rebellion: it was considered an attack on the Divine, an act of destruction that carried moral and religious consequences for everyone else in the now weakened structure. Andrea’s ambitions therefore force him to hide the truth about himself beneath layers of artfully constructed pasts. Luck he does not believe in, but destiny, it is known, can change with the wheeling of the stars across the sky – and Andrea is bent on helping his stars rearrange his life in major ways. Belief in the influence of celestial bodies is, in fact, so common that prudence induces him, at a defining point before a crucial undertaking, to bribe an official astrologer into drawing up a favourable horoscope in order to boost the courage of the people he is leading.

Andrea’s opportunism is fortunately timed. Italy is in upheaval and the normal workings of society are out of joint. But while the success he is enjoying as the novel opens is based on genuine achievements as a soldier and diplomat those same achievements would have been impossible without the springboard of deliberately created but dangerous illusions. Significantly, our introduction to Andrea and his adventures takes place in Venice, a city rich in symbolism associated with masques and disguises, in the studio of a master craftsman and artist (the famous instrument-maker Lorenzo Gusnasco da Pavia). It is a scene steeped in hidden agendas, in deceptions involving identity and provenance, in transactions with ulterior purposes, all while the key players conduct themselves as if nothing except elegant manners, quick wit, and courtly generosity is of any consequence. Unlike the anonymity and freedoms associated with Venice’s Carnival the masks in Prince Of Foxes, whether literal or metaphorical, are neither liberating nor an aid for indulging in irreverence or licentiousness. On the contrary, masks are worn as confirmation or proof of identity. They are a deadly serious and necessary political and social armour. Having a mask torn off – being exposed – means death, either ritual death through loss of social and/or political status or literal death.

Masks worn to deceive, conceal, or to impress are adapted to the different personae one is required to play in a given situation: ardent lover, obsequious servant, loyal ally, honourable soldier, indispensable diplomat, humble artist, etc. (Crafted by the author to represent an ideal Renaissance man, Andrea is uniquely suited for the versatility his career demands. His proficiency with brushes and paint (he is, literally, a second Mantegna), music, and metallurgy complement his skills as a soldier and diplomat. These attributes are no mere shorthand for character perfection. They serve the plot and enrich the portrait of the age. Fortunately, too, Andrea displays the intelligence required for readers to believe in his polymathism.) Simplicity is associated with a lack of social graces and therefore as appalling as lack of breeding. Nobility and respectability are recognisable in sophistication – elegance of manners, gallant valour, educated tastes, the arts of diplomacy – backed up by raw power and bold ideas.

No wonder Andrea thinks Varano is an easily oustable, rustic simpleton, just like the Chevalier de Bayard’s3 insistence on honour above all causes Andrea to detest the Frenchman as an annoying pest. In a social milieu sustained by show and illusion nothing is more unsettling or subversive than sincerity and authenticity. Once Andrea begins to suspect that Msrc’ Antonio Varano is actually not the fool he had assumed and that the man’s courtliness merely follows different norms than any known to celebrated society it throws the younger man off his practiced game. His manipulative habit of always playing a part leads him to mistake and misread intentions every time the castle inhabitants at Città del Monte fail to respond to ritual cues and signals in the accustomed manner. Consequently, he mistakes hospitality and politeness for threats and hypocrisy, then is confused when the dangers he expected fail to materialise. As long as he continues to dissemble he also absurdly misjudges and misunderstands the two women he courts. Only when he drops his artificial persona, voluntarily in one case, inadvertently in the other, is he able to discover their true natures and to understand them. Interestingly, neither woman has ever attempted to mislead him about their feelings albeit one is discreet whereas the other wears her heart on her sleeve.

In mediaeval thought physical appearance was an outward manifestation of the soul. Beauty or perfection of body implied purity, ugliness or deformity or disability, vice. Faces and bodies in Prince of Foxes therefore constitute another mask. Lucrezia Borgia’s angelic countenance acts like a glamour that effectively disarms resistance; Alda’s intellect and ethics are commonly inferred to be proportionate to the smallness of her stature; and Mario Belli’s macabre visage, “the spitting image of Judas Iscariot” (p. 22), enhances his fearsome – and well-earned – professional reputation through the falsehood and devilry people read there. The sardonically exaggerated elegance Belli flaunts is found to be grotesque, and the same marks of breeding that in other men would be considered proof of nobility earn Belli angry suspicions of insolence. His very smile causes people to shiver and cross themselves. Belli’s ambiguity is one of the trump cards of the plot: are we supposed to side with him or against him? Some readers may feel no doubt (I saw signs this time around that I missed when I was a young reader), but Shellabarger still manages to pull a surprise twist at the end.

Not much room is given to the female characters to be protagonists. The men are the doers and facilitators. Likewise, the principal male/female relationship has a sly charm that contributes sparkle and brightness to the story, yet the dynamics between the various male characters follow more surprising courses and probe tenser depths. Women’s roles are essentially confined to being givers and receivers of love who exert either a positive or negative moral influence on the men in their lives. Within that narrow definition, however, they possess individual spirit and shrewd intelligence. Angela Borgia is no one’s fool but she loves passionately and sincerely; her cousin, Lucrezia Borgia, who hates discord and tries to make everyone happy has learnt to be pragmatic, accepting what she believes she cannot change; Costanza Zoppo, the only one who felt a bit distant to me because the plot sidelines her at a couple of points where a direct spotlight on her would have been warranted, is a worrier yet refuses to trade her integrity for fame and fortune; Alda dei’s Nani’s vanity protects her from being diminished by stereotyping and she turns prejudice into a blind that screens mutiny; the gamine Camilla Baglione cannot resist an opportunity for mischief but is brave and loyal to the core; and Lucia of Narni’s weakened body houses a burning inner gaze that shies from nothing. Every single one of them engaged my interest and several, including an antagonist, also elicited my sympathy.

Major spoilers:

If one prominent female character erodes into stereotype it is because the plot eventually squeezes her into a worn mould as the other woman. Whereas Camilla Baglione represents love that breeds loyalty, Angela Borgia is the personification of passion that warps into hatred. The latter woman’s sexuality is the subject of all too familiar misogyny, yet Shellabarger cannot be accused of making her a cardboard villain. She is a convincing character and her storyline develops organically. One of the very rare characters who are open about their feelings, she does not seem to understand the need to wear a mask. She gives of herself to the man she loves, faithfully, without holding anything back, for which she is at first exploited, then scorned by her lover, and punished by the storyline. As convention once stipulated, although the perceived breaches against morality for which Angela is shamed are actually mutually committed, Andrea’s offenses are measured according to a different scale. These include Angela falling pregnant and using an abortifacient (off-page - blink and you'll miss it). The affair is soon superseded by a violent act that frames Andrea as a victim deserving of sympathy and, by implication, forgiveness, while simultaneously removing any doubt about Angela’s innate depravity and, also by implication, voiding her claim to fair treatment. For Angela does not take Andrea’s betrayal sitting down. When he ends their relationship with callous, casual words, she retaliates by severing him from herself with a hot-blooded physical act. What remains of their storyline is a jilted woman whose subsequent storyline is filled with humiliations and an anything but sinless hero who to the end is not above deriving satisfaction from those humiliations. Whether she deserves sympathy or whether she truly has gone beyond the pale the narrative at first seems to leave to the reader to decide: the last glimpse of her is accompanied by an acknowledgement of her suffering. But it is immediately countered by a comment I presume is an allusion to Dante’s Inferno4. Prince Of Foxes is a story that probes beyond facades and finds reason for tenderness and forgiveness. Arguing that redemption is conditional, however, the conclusion firmly rejects amnesty, tallying with Christ’s parable of the ten foolish and wise virgins (“virgin” is figurative here and does not denote gender, either).

End of spoilers

Instances of unexpected insight afforded by a couple of secondary characters supply poignant subtext to sensitive but seemingly ignored themes. Slavery, which included the breeding and sale5 of little people (dwarfs/midgets in the novel’s terminology) by nobles such as Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua (mentioned in passing in the book as wanting to buy Alda), was a feature of Italian Renaissance society. As the novel comments, the “beloved little monsters of Court, dwarfs and other human curios, trotting about in attire no less eccentric than themselves, added the gargoyle touch” (p. 67). In a society where slavery is as commonplace a part of the fabric of everyday life as portents and signs, characters display attitudes believable for their time. People like Alda (Camilla Baglione’s dwarf companion) and Seraph (Andrea’s “blackamoor” page) are spectacles like Belli, and usually irrelevant except as entertaining pets and human collectibles (Like unmasking implies loss of power among higher classes, having their nude appearance publicly speculated on by others emphasises Alda and Seraph’s slave status, pp.14, 168.). The omniscient narration frames character beliefs and actions in this cultural context and the reader will have to pay attention to subtle clues to realise how carefully the authorial critique is realised: in the fizzy presence of irony in plot twists and characterisations, in subversive autonomy. One will find no denunciatory lectures being mouthed by a culturally sensitive hero or heroine.

The narrative continuously juxtaposes physical abnormality and spiritual deformity. One is judged or shunned without testing, the other goes undetected or is admired and rewarded. Even beloved “human curios” are regarded as things apart from ordinary humanity. Camilla, who clearly loves (and is loved by) Alda and considers her “twice as clever” as herself (p. 166) nevertheless treats this “Princess of the Dwarfs” (dei Nani) like a dress-up doll and a showpiece who must perform at command. At the same time it is in this character that we are quietly made aware of the differences between public and private reality. The patronising assumptions underlying the amusement Camilla and Andrea derive from Alda (and Seraph) is pointedly absent from her interactions with Mario Belli. Scarred by a society that equates worth with physical standards they can never meet, Alda and Belli instantly develop a sympathy for each other that others do not comprehend. Their alliance is seen as “proof positive that dwarfs had no souls; or rather that they were imps of hell, who would naturally find the company of Satan congenial” (p. 385). But “[in] each other’s company, they were off stage, no longer outsiders on the defensive, but snug in the comradeship of a point of view” (p. 295).

It is the unprocessed attitudes of his own time and milieu that on a few occasions cause Shellabarger’s judgment to slip as he negotiates historical fact with concessions to entertainment. The old stereotype that little people are prone to vanity is on display in the portrayal of Alda, but Seraph, on the other hand, is a clear-cut example of myopia. A slave child of African heritage whom Camilla acquires on a whim from Andrea, his character and personality are sheer caricature. “An ebony cherub, a jet cupid” (p. 14) he is made to strut self-importantly through his few scenes “like an infant sultan” (p. 167). Like Alda’s, his personal history is omitted but he is moreover deprived of the de-stereotyping benefit of an independent voice. The implied intention that readers’ laughter be affectionate makes the objectification even more souring because it so blindly neglects the value accorded in the novel to the concepts of justice and freedom.

On balance, it is one of the few blots and flaws in an otherwise astute and riveting historical novel. Prince Of Foxes goes into the past and collects advice for the future, imparting inspiration and warnings with such panache that the resulting story can be enjoyed as pure escapism. To borrow the peerless and extremely fitting description of S. Morgenstern’s classic tale of True Love and High Adventure6 it has “Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True Love. Hate. Revenge. Giants [okay, dwarfs]. Hunters. Bad Men. Good Men. Beautifulest Ladies. Snakes [several Borgias surely count]. Spiders [with so many castles, they must lurk in a murky corner somewhere]. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles.” Plus: Cannons. Astrology. Madness. And More. In short (I know, I know), Prince of Foxes is as entertaining as historical fiction gets. Do give it a try.

1. Although he seems to have been too much of a professional to ever deliver less than his best, Tyrone Power was at a point in his career where he must have been tired of parts that required little more of him than to look debonair as he struts around in period costume. In Prince of Foxes he cannot help looking too jaded for the youthful, optimistic vitality of Andrea.

2. Narni was long known as Narnia. According to Walter Hooper, C.S. Lewis's literary executor, Lewis found out about Lucia Brocadelli and Narni when he was fourteen and it helped inspire his own creation, including a heroine who is not believed when she sees and experiences supernatural things. (Lucia Brocadelli, along with other Savonarolans, was hounded by disbelieving Church authorities and eventually fell from public favour.) Isn't it marvellous how the world of books is full of unexpected revelations and connections around every corner?

4. The line “Look at them and pass by” (p. 421) is, I am guessing, a reference to those in Dante’s Hell who are guilty of indifference regarding good and evil: "The world does not remember them at all;/ Mercy and justice treat them with contempt:/ Let us not talk about them – look and pass on." Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto III, translated by C.H. Sisson, Oxford University Press paperback 1993, p.57.

5. See for example Fools Are Everywhere: The Jester Around The World by Beatrice K. Otto, The University of Chicago Press, 2007, page 29: “According to a miscellany of 1670, dwarfs could be created by anointing babies’ spines with the grease of bats, moles, and dormice, while more palatable descriptions used drugs such as the aptly named dwarf elder, knotgrass, and daisy juice and roots mixed with milk to stunt growth. Children were kidnapped or bought to be turned into artificial dwarfs, and it was in Italy and Spain that the practice was most common, its perpetrators in Spain being called comprachicos or “child-buyers”. The practice was clearly known in England, as Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1600) testifies […] (3.2.327-29)”. Isabella d’Este owned several little people, mentioning Morgantino and Delia in her will. Her correspondence records the transfer of child dwarfs, as noted in Julia Cartwright's biography: “"I promised Madame Renée to give her the first girl who was born to my dwarfs. As she knows, the puttina is now two years old, and will no doubt remain a dwarf, although she hardly gives hopes of being as tiny as my Delia. She is now able to walk alone and without a guide, if the Duchess wishes to have her." Another " bella Nanina" was sent by the Marchesa to Ferrante Gonzaga's wife in October 1533, and the young princess wrote a grateful letter to her mother-inlaw saying that the dwarf was the sweetest and gentlest creature in the world, and afforded her infinite amusement."” (In Isabella d'Este, Marchioness of Mantua 1474-1539, Vol.II, 1923, p. 364, available at the Internet Archive.)

“Amethyst had yielded to azure in the square, the deep azure of Venetian night, which has its own starry radiance. Torches began flaring on the piazza. An echo of music sounded from the lagoon.

Orsini got up at last and strolled to the Columns of St. Mark, where the gondola lanterns bobbed up and down like tethered fireflies. He deliberated on the evening. Of course he would be welcome at the Papal Legate’s, but he had called there that morning and wound up his official business. An excellent establishment in the Giudecca, kept by a certain Mona Giulia, had been recommended to him if he required a buona compagna; but he reflected that he must leave at dawn for Chioggia, the starting point for Ferrara, and he was in no mood for a white night.

Selecting a gondola and settling down in the cushions, he instructed the boatman: ‘Anywhere, friend. The Canal Grande – an affair of an hour – then back to the Riva degli Schiavoni.’

They glided away through the spangled water, and he filled his lungs with the haunting sea air. Other gondolas slipped past with lovers or merrymakers. A delicious languor filled the night, lapping of water, wandering of music. He felt a longing, sweeter than possession, for the indescribable, the unattainable. He would return here someday with her; he would occupy one of these palaces; they would live in terms of color – sapphire and silver – in terms of a casement open on the sea-scented night.

[…]

It had grown late when finally the gondola, following the Riva degli Schiavoni, glided into the Rio della Pietà, upon which the entrance of the tavern, the Star, opened. Having paid his fare, Orsini stood a moment, drawing a last breath of the sea breeze and watching the lantern of the gondola until it disappeared beyond the next curve of the canal. Half drowsily he realized that it was a night he would always remember, the more perhaps because he had spent it alone. Then, turning back into the dank passage between house walls that led to the front of the inn, he found that the lamp marking the tavern door had been allowed to go out.

He groped his way through the pitch darkness, cursing the carelessness of the inn servants; but he could see vaguely the space between the mouth of the alley and the inn, which stood in a tiny campiello surrounded by houses. The scuttle of a rat startled him as if it had been a footstep, and he was glad to reach the end of the passage. He determined to have a word with the landlord about that lamp.

A metal click sounded, and at the same moment he was dazzled by the light of a dark lantern turned full against his eyes.

‘Gran Dio!’ he exclaimed. ‘What’s up?’

‘This,’ answered a voice, coupled with the ripping, stinging blow of a knife.

The Romantic Armchair Traveller

Danielle C. tours the globe through romantic fiction, including romance novels. You are welcome to comment on any post at any time. While I strive to respond to each comment, a delay of a few days may occasionally occur.